Psalm 46 also comes up at significant calendar moments, this week and every Easter to be precise. A recent blog reviewed the many options for this psalm offered in Psalms for All Seasons. Recalling our leader’s sure touch with such themes, drawing on time spent in remote islands and the Iona Community in particular, PFAS 46D Alternate Refrain I from John Bell and Wild Goose has a head start.

The refrain has two parts, the second being an exact echo of the first one bar later. The technique of echo or imitation has been widely used as a way of harmonising a melody, especially in renaissance contrapuntal motets but elsewhere in many psalm settings. As is the requirement when composing a song that can be sung as a round, the repetition of a harmonic pattern helps. The more complex the chord structure, unless within a short cycle, the more difficult is the task of composing a tune that fits the changes throughout.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) wrote a highly imitative setting for Psalm 46 for three similar voices. The second and third are also delayed by one bar each. In this situation, the composer often has to choose to vary either the imitative melody or the chord structure. Telemann chose to keep the chords simple and repetitive — a constant cycle between tonic, subdominant and dominant with a few relative minors en passant — leading (IMHO) to a rather lacklustre piece.

Back to Bell and his echo. His first four bars are simple enough, alternating between E and C# minor. Budding composers would have no trouble fitting a repetitive echo melody to that sequence. But try making up a tune to fit this sequence equally well regardless of whether it starts at bar 1 or bar 2:

| A | E | F#m7 G#m7 | AΔ B7 | E |

John Bell has it down to a fine art, cleverly using a simple pentatonic scale in this case. Which came first, the chords or the tune?